Having cured my electrical woes, I was anxious to tum the engine over. So I did. And it cranked real nice! So I went and pulled the plugs to crank it some more to see if I got spark and oil pressure. So I did. And it did. On both accounts. Wow! I got oil pressure, I got spark, time for some gas. I put the lawnmower gas can in the trunk of the M3 and went to the Mobil station for a fill up. I momentarily forgot the can in the trunk when I took advantage of an opening in traffic to kick the rear end out of the Bimmer. It was almost a bummer in the Bimmer as I heard a ka-whunk in the trunk but when I opened the trunk up at the Mobil station the can was still upright and sealed. It sure let out a pshhhhh though as I popped open the breather and filled her up.
Back at the ranch, I stuffed a bunch of rags around the filler neck and started pouring in the gas. About 2 gallons into the process I decided it might be a good idea to look for leaks. Sure enough, some idiot had left one of the fittings loose and there was about $1.50 worth (2 ounces) of gas on the floor. I'm the only one working on this car by the way. I quickly grabbed a rag and some wrenches and dove underneath the tanks to tighten the line. It's always lots of fun to work under a car that's leaking gas. You have to stretch your arms out so it's not pouring on you and so you are not laying in it. Also as you tighten up the fitting, the gas flow then starts finding the path from your hands to your arms to your arm pits. Luckily I had on a long sleeve sweatshirt so it just got soaked up at the wrists. Still not a lovely smell to bring into the house for your wife to nag you about. It's not High Karate, it's High Octane! So anyway, I got the fitting tightened real quick but the smell of gas was now permeating throughout the garage. But not to worry, my gas attacks were far from over.
I finished up putting about 4 gallons in the tank and made sure that the gas from one tank was flowing through the hose to the other tank; so far so good. Time to see if spark and gas combined can make zoom or boom. I like zoom, but I don't like boom. I cranked it over a bit and from the sound I could tell there was no zoom or boom happening. I pulled a plug and it was still dry so I figured that the fuel pump was a bit dry and needed something to wet its whistle. Down the alley I went to Paul's to pick up an old Elmer's glue bottle that he sometimes uses to squirt gas in his formula Ford to get it going. On the way back down the alley I eliminated the few drops of old gas he had in the bottle and filled it up with fresh gas back in my garage. I hooked up some hose line and squeezed a little gas down into the floats of the Strombergs and a little gas down the lines back into the fuel pump. Although I was careful, this still produced a bit more of that pungent gas aroma. Time to open the garage door even though it's only 20 degrees out. I cranked the engine over again and this time it made some noise. Not a real bad noise, just the typical out of timing noise. So I started cranking the distributor a bit and cranked it again. Bit by bit it sounded better. Ended up that somehow I was 90 degrees out and after a few more attempts she fired up! I had cranked the idle up on the carbs a bit so the engine ran at about 2500 rpm as I quickly dashed around the car to look for leaks and/or fires. About 20 seconds into the run the front carb started spewing gas out it's vent. I quickly shut her down and got some more rags out to soak up the gas that had puked onto my nice powder coated chassis. Tums out the powder coatìng was quite strong and no damage was done. I tossed all the gas soaked rags out the door but the garage still reeked. I sprayed a little Simple Green on the spillage and wiped things down. More sacrificial rags gave their lives here. A good way to recycle old underpants and socks.
So now the next step was to pull off the carbs and see why #1 was puking gas. It's normally about a half hour process to unplug and unbolt everything. By the time I was done fixing this bug I had it down to 5 minutes! I first pulled off the float bowl and checked the float level which seemed fine. I hooked up a hose and did some blowing and it seemed to shut off the flow as it should at the right spot. After confering with Rich Cwik I ordered a set of Grosse jet needle/seat sets from RD and they arrived a couple days later. I installed them and remounted the carbs. I started her up and the same thing happened again - puking front carb. I got out my trusty rusty Sears Penske pressure gauge; the one I got for Christmas from my parents in 1974 along with the little analyzer used for adjusting points. I looked up the gauge and found that the fuel pump was on steroids. It was putting out 5 psi when 1.5-2.5 will do. I ordered a Holly low pressure fuel regulator off ebay and it arrived a couple days later. I had a problem with the ebay item as this unit appeared to be a cheap knockoff. You could tell the casting marks were not real crisp and the threads for the fittings were all a bit tight. I guess it's better than being too loose. I borrowed a pipe tap from you know who, tapped out the thread and hooked everything back up. I adjusted the pressure down and started the engine up again thinking this had to be it. Nope! Still puking. Off came the carbs again. This time I focused on the front carb float assembly. I took it out and made sure it actually floated in a cup of water - OK. I next checked to make sure it shut off the flow at the prescribed height by blowing into a clean fuel line - OK. Finally I noticed that the little tang that rides the needle ball was bent at an angle instead of being straight. This was causing the float to actually walk over to the side of the bowl and hang up. Aha! I re-bent the tang, reassembled everything and finally got her fired up and running with no gas spewage. I opened the garage door to let out the fumes and opened a cold one. The sound of success... zoom with no boom!
Next - Europa Euphoria, Part 29
